Frank Zafiro - And Every Man Has to Die

Carson left the bathroom and found the man still on the porch. She took a deep breath of the fresh air.

“Sir?”

The man glanced up quickly. A cigarette dangled between his fingers. “Is she okay?”

Carson hesitated. She’d never delivered news like this to anyone before, and was unsure exactly what to say. Finally she managed to say, “No, sir. I’m afraid she’s… gone.”

Tears welled up in the man’s eyes and dropped down his face. “I knew it.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Carson added, remembering a line from a cop show she used to watch.

The man took a long, wavering drag on his cigarette. “She was an alcoholic, you know? A mean drunk, too. So was I. But when she was off the sauce, she was the sweetest woman in the whole damn world.”

“I’m sure she was.”

Carson stood silently to give the man a chance to digest the news while he smoked his cigarette. The man took deep, deliberate drags and let the smoke out in shuddering exhales. Carson wondered what was going through his mind.

When he’d finished the cigarette and stubbed out the butt, Carson cleared her throat. “Sir, if you can,” she said, “I need to ask you a few questions.”

The man nodded. “Sure.”

“Your name, sir?”

“Robert Carew. Her name is Anne.”

Carson wrote that down on her notepad. She took a few minutes to get biographical information about both him and Anne, then asked, “What happened tonight?”

“She’d been drinking all night,” Robert said. “We had a fight earlier. I said some things I didn’t mean. She said some things I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean. Then she… did this.” He waved toward the house as his face dissolved into tears.

Carson changed gears. “Let’s start at the beginning, Robert. When did she start drinking?”

Robert wiped his eyes. He shrugged. “I don’t know. She was probably fourteen or so, I guess. Her parents were both alcoholics, so it wasn’t tough for her to get ahold of some booze.”

Carson shook her head. “No, sir. That’s not what I meant. I meant, when did she start drinking tonight?”

“Oh.” Robert let out a rueful chuckle that died on his lips. “I’m not sure. See, I’m a knife salesman. I have a route. I spend two nights a week away from home. I was in Oregon last night. I came home tonight at about six o’clock and she was already hammered.”

“Did you drink tonight?”

“No. I’m an alcoholic, but I’m sober. Five months now.”

Carson made a note. “So there was an argument, you said?”

“Yeah. It’s hard, you know? When one person quits and the other one won’t. You sympathize, you know what they’re going through, but being around it is hard. It’s very tempting.”

“Was that what the argument was about, Robert?”

He nodded, reaching into his robe for his cigarettes. “She wanted me to drink with her and I wouldn’t. She said I thought I was better than her. ‘Holier than thou,’ she called me. I just listened to her a while, then told her to shut up, and I went into the bedroom and read.”

“Did she say anything else to you?”

“Just that she thought that I’d be better off without her.”

“Did you respond to that?”

Tears welled up in Robert’s eyes again. He nodded, his face pinched. He struggled to shake a cigarette out of the pack, then lit it up.

“What did you say, Robert?” Carson asked gently.

“I said that in her current state, she was probably right.” Robert sniffed and wiped his nose with his robe sleeve. Then he looked squarely at Carson. “And you know what? Those were the last words I said to her.”

Carson nodded. “I’m sorry,” was all she could think to say.

Robert stared off down the street, trembling and smoking.

Carson heard Battaglia open the screen door and step out onto the porch with them. “Detective Finch has been notified and is en route. Sergeant Shen was advised. You can probably leave once the detective gets here.”

“Okay.” She turned back to Robert, very aware of Battaglia’s watching eyes. “I know this is difficult, but I’m going to have to ask you a few more questions, Robert. Are you up to that?”

“Yes,” Robert answered, his voice thick from crying.

“Has Anne ever tried to harm herself before?”

“Just by damn near drinking herself to death.”

“Has she been down lately?”

“A little. It was her son’s birthday last week. She tried to call him but he wouldn’t come to the phone.”

“Why’s that?”

“They don’t get along so good.”

“Did that upset her?”

“Yeah, a little. Then she drank and a little became a lot. You know how drunks are. I know how drunks are. I was one for eight years.” Robert inhaled deeply from his cigarette.

Carson paused. “Who does the gun belong to?”

“It’s hers. I bought it at the pawn shop so she had something to protect herself with when I was out of town.”

“All right.” Carson tried to keep her voice as soothing as possible. “Tell me what happened after you went into the bedroom to read.”

Robert sighed. “Well, I read for about three hours. I got up, went into the bathroom to take a leak-”

“Where was she?”

“Still on the couch.Still drinking.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“I went into the bathroom and as I was going in, I saw her get up and go into the bedroom. I was thinking, you know, great. She either wants to fight some more, or make up and be… well, with me, you know? Or she’s stealing the bed for the night, which would leave me with the couch. But then when I finished using the bathroom, she had come out of the bedroom and was back on the couch. So I went to bed.”

Carson nodded and waited for him to continue.

“She was getting the gun,” Robert said. “That’s what she was doing in the bedroom. I didn’t know it then, but that’s what she had to be doing. Anyway, after about twenty minutes, I heard a loud bang. I ran into the bathroom. She was sitting on the toilet and bleeding and I saw the gun on the floor…”

Robert began to cry again. He struggled to stop, but the sobs came in huge seizures and shook his whole upper body. The ash on his cigarette had grown long. It defied gravity, staying on the cigarette as Robert sobbed.

Carson glanced at Battaglia. His mouth was set in a hard line as he watched. Carson put her hand on Robert’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Robert. No more questions, okay?”

“The questions don’t bother me,” Robert said. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his robe sleeve again. “I know you’re just doing what you have to do. It just rips me up. Like I said before, when she’s clean and sober, she is the most wonderful woman alive. And her figure comes back, too. God, for a woman of forty-five…”

“Alcohol changes people,” Carson said.

Robert nodded and wiped his nose again. “You know, they tell you in Al-Anon that you can’t make a person stop drinking. They have to want to stop.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“They also tell you that sometimes you just have to let a person sink to their lowest point.” Robert looked at Carson with a straight face. “I guess that’s what she did.”

Carson patted his shoulder and turned away. She bit the inside of her mouth and didn’t say another word while she waited for Finch to arrive. She ignored Battaglia’s inquisitive glances. Once the detective was on scene, Carson cleared the call.

Only when she was back in her patrol car and safely out of the neighborhood did she laugh aloud at Robert’s comment. Her laughter came in huge gulps of air, blasting out in high-pitched tones. She slapped the steering wheel.

“I guess… that’s… what she did,” she repeated in between the peals of laughter.